THE LONG-RUN IMPACT OF AGE DEMOGRAPHICS ON THE U.S. DIVORCE RATE

We investigate, for the time period 1932 to 2006, the extent to which fluctuations in the fraction of the population in the 20—29 year-old age group can predict movements in the aggregate U.S. divorce rate. We find that fluctuations in our age-composition variable are a very robust predictor of the divorce rate in the long run, with estimated elasticities ranging from 1 to 1.3 depending on the modeling approach. We check the sensitivity of the age-divorce relationship to the inclusion of a number of other explanatory variables advanced in the literature as potential determinants of the divorce rate, including the participation rate of females in higher education as a proxy for female economic independence and macroeconomic variables.